Tomato farmers in Pakistan’s Sindh province have started scrapping their harvest-ready crops as a price crash has made it impossible for them to even break even.
Mehmood Nawaz Shah, senior vice president Sindh Abadgar Board said: “Prices are so down that growers are unable to get the cost of production back. Thus, they were removing tomato crop from fields. Two days back, some growers did destroy their crop.”
“Though it’s not unusual, it was government’s policy failure that led to this situation. While local onion and tomato were being harvested, traders were still importing them from overseas; however, tomato imports came to a halt after its local prices hit a rock bottom.”
“We wrote a letter to the Ministry of National Food Security to stop the import of tomatoes, but to no avail. The import stopped only after local tomato prices nosedived.”
Source: thenews.com.pk
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